<div><blockquote class="callout" style="border-left-color:#448aff;">
<div class="callout-title note" style="background-color: #448aff1a;"><span style="color:#448aff" class="callout-icon"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="16" height="16" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide-pencil"><line x1="18" y1="2" x2="22" y2="6"></line><path d="M7.5 20.5 19 9l-4-4L3.5 16.5 2 22z"></path></svg></span><strong><p>Due. Sept 21st 11:59 pm</p></strong></div>
</blockquote></div>
<h2 id="overview"><a aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1" href="#overview"><span class="icon icon-link"></span></a>Overview</h2>
<p>This assignment assesses your ability to identify a viable research subject and digital tool, ask a concise research question about a historical theme or tension that a digital tool may help uncover the answers to, and locate preliminary academic sources. The proposal document is meant to hypothesize a projected endpoint for your research during the course, but you are not expected to achieve it (<strong>but do try</strong>). Isolating a historical topic along with a digital technology/methodology that interests you and providing a firm research question about your topic will help you establish tangible research goals for the duration of the course.  It will allow you to create focused and concise notes in your open-access notebook. A graduate research topic may come out of this... Who knows?</p>
<div><blockquote class="callout" style="border-left-color:undefined;">
<div class="callout-title error" style="background-color: undefined1a;"><span style="color:undefined" class="callout-icon"></span><strong><p>Proposal Submission</p></strong></div>
<div class="callout-content" style=""><p>Please submit your proposals <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdesW1VH-HR93DEn0GhsMLbHJLnLfF9bzHVIvlGhRplvFvciA/viewform?usp=dialog">HERE</a></p></div>
</blockquote></div>
<h3 id="layout"><a aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1" href="#layout"><span class="icon icon-link"></span></a>Layout</h3>
<p><strong>The following examples, based on my personal research, are intended to guide how to formulate a proposal.</strong></p>
<ol>
<li>Identify your research topic:  <strong>The Chronicle of Morea</strong></li>
<li>Propose a research question: <strong>Can Optical Character Recognition (OCR) identify the Greek word δρομος in the Chronicle of Morea?</strong></li>
<li>Propose a hypothesis based on your initial readings: <strong>We can train an LLM to develop code and use the Internet Archive's digitized manuscripts as a database to begin training models to learn and identify medieval Greek.</strong></li>
<li>Why? <strong>Recent research has demonstrated that OCR can identify medieval Latin text, suggesting that programs can learn ancient languages.</strong></li>
<li>What digital resources may help you prove your hypothesis: <strong>Claude Sonnet, Scrapers, internetarchives.org</strong></li>
</ol>
<p>Another example:</p>
<ol>
<li>Identify your research topic:  <strong>Manuel I Komnenos' coins</strong></li>
<li>Propose a research question: <strong>How can LLMs and photogrammetry technologies help prove the circulation period of the emperor's coins?</strong></li>
<li>Propose a hypothesis based on your initial readings: <strong>LLMs provide increased computational abilities that can use complex algorithms to identify patterns which could support coin wear/use analysis.</strong></li>
<li>Why? <strong>Photogrammetry takes tens to hundreds of images that could be used to perform fine-grained analysis of the wear of a coin. An LLM may be able to identify consistencies or inconsistencies in a coin's surface wear composition.</strong></li>
<li>What digital resources may help you prove your hypothesis: **Blender is a 3D imaging software that allows plugins (and could perform an API call to an LLM) and could be used for fine-grained measurements of coin details.</li>
</ol>
<p><strong>Now put this into a concise 500 word document with one primary source and three secondary sources, and you are good to go!. Again, do not be intimidated by the above examples. You can choose any ancient or medieval topic you want alongside any tech tool you want to learn about. This is about the process, not the end product.</strong></p>

Welcome

1. Course Description

2. Learning Outcomes

3. Course Schedule

4. Evaluation

5. Course Communications

6. Common Regulations

6. Contact the Professor

how the course tech is built; how the course came to be

7. Colophon

8. Reuse

Orientation and Digital Setup

Week 1

Personal Knowledge Management and Linked Thinking

Week 2

Thinking about the “Craft” of Digital History

Week 3

Crusading into the Digital Age of LLMs

Week 4

Consolidation & Check-In Week

Week 5

Digital Excavation

Week 6

Defining Data, 'Dark' Data, & Identifiers

Week 7

Fall Break

Week 8

Seeing the Past?

Week 9

Week 10

Authority and Positionality in Your Digital Research

Week 11

Publicly Crafting a Historical Argument

Week 12

Open-Access Notebook Workshop

Week 13

Exit Ticket

Week 14

1 Setting up your vault

2 Create your first note

3 Templater Plugiin

4 What Goes into a Note?

5 Properties

Hypothesis

The Simplest Online Memex Worfklow

How To Read An Academic Article

FAQ for Common Tech Issues

Where to Find help

Text Formatting

Introduction to your vault

index note

Atomic Note

Literature Note

Process Note

Weekly Journal

Topic Proposal

Weekly Work & Tasks

Consolidation Reflection

Open Access Notebook/Memex

Benchmarking Your Memex

Exit Ticket/Final Project

1 Welcome to Crafting Digital History Transcript

2 Obsidian User Interface (UI) Guide

3 Templater and Hotkeys Setup

4 How to use PDF++

5 Canvas Core Plugin Introductory Tutorial

6 Hypothes.is and Annotating the Web

7 Omnisearch Plugin for Obsidian

8 How to Use Process Notes for Digital Research Projects in Obsidian

9 Properties, Identifiers and Data Management with Obsidian Core Plugin Bases

1 Welcome to Crafting Digital History

2 Some Logistical Updates

3 Welcome to Week Two

4 What is Digital History?

5 Crusading into the Digital Age of LLMs

6 Week Four Exercise Example

7 Using Obsidian for Digital History Research and Note-Making

8 Reflection Feedback Update and Hypothes.is

9 Week Five Update

10 Consolidation Reflection Submission

11 Module Two Wrangling and Critiquing

12 Week 7 Update

13 Week 9 Welcome Back

14 Consolidation Week Number 2

1. Course Overview

Module 1 Contextualizing

Module 2 Wrangling & Critiquing

Module 3 Arguing & Communicating

2. Schedule

01  memex help

8. Course Files

3. Tutorials

4. Assessment

5. VideoTutorials

Crafting Digital History

News